Housing Law Commons^™

Housing Equity In Golden Gate Village, Nicole White

Social Justice | Senior Theses

For generations, the African American community has faced many forms of housing discrimination that have created major inequalities in their everyday lived experiences (Lockwood, 2020). This study explores the long-lasting effects of discriminatory housing policies in creating disparate housing conditions within the public housing community in Marin City called Golden Gate Village, as well as the role of the Marin Housing Authority in practices of displacement and neglect. The methodology for the study included seven different interviews with Golden Gate Village residents to obtain knowledge about the community as well as grasp an understanding of the lived experiences of the …

Change We Can Believe In: The Seventh Circuit's Exposure Of Inadequate Environmental Review In Protect Our Parks V. Buttigieg, P. Nicholas Greco

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Water Justice: The Ninth Circuit Examines The Fair Housing Act In The Context Of Water Services In Southwest Fair Housing Council Inc. V. Maricopa Domestic Water Improvement District, Zachary J. Thummborst

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

On The Fence About Immigration And Overpopulation: "Environmentalists" Challenge Dhs Policies On Nepa Basis In Whitewater Draw Natural Resource Conservation District V. Mayorkas, Maya J. Williams

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Housing Hipsters: Adapting The Spirit Of Hipster Antitrust To Address Wealth Asymmetries Between Corporate Residential Properties And Cost-Burdened Residents, Beth Brodsky

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Sean Gotcher, a real estate agent for 11 years, went viral on TikTok with a real estate hypothetical.1 Gotcher asked how weird society would be if a billion-dollar company collected data on what people would be willing to pay for housing by zip code and then use that information to buy under the market-rate in order to sell above the market rate.2 He wondered how weird it would be if this company bought 31 homes in a two-mile radius to sell for a profit of $1.2 million within a year.3 Zillow inspired this scenario. 4 After Gotcher’s TikTok video received …

The White Supremacist Structure Ofamerican Zoning Law, Sarah J. Adams-Schoen

Brooklyn Law Review

This article disrupts the false narrative of white supremacism that has, for more than a century, cast American land use law as race neutral. In doing so, this article builds on an important but underdeveloped body of legal scholarship elucidating zoning law’s role in creating and perpetuating a separate and unequal dual housing system. It provides primary historical evidence and a clear narrative demonstrating that the defining feature of American zoning law—a strict residential use taxonomy that privileges neighborhoods of restrictively regulated single-family homes and burdens less restrictively regulated residential areas—emerged directly from the facially race-based and facially neutral, but …

A Theoretical Justification For Treating The Contract For Deed As A Mortgage, Matthew J. Blaney

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Millions of Americans finance their home using the treacherous contract for deed. Denied access to the conventional mortgage, the contract for deed often is the only alternative for Americans seeking the stability of homeownership. Historically, however, this deceptive financing device disrupted the lives of thousands of individuals by forfeiting their property and all payments made on the contract—even where only one installment was overdue. Low-income Americans and immigrant families disproportionately experience the brunt of the contract for deed. Furthermore, as Americans experience rising prices and increasing financial instability, there is reason to fear sellers—equipped with insight into lenders’ former mistakes—could …

Covid-19 And The Rise In Commercial Real Estate Bankruptcies: The Path To Reach The Goals Of Bankruptcy Code §365(D)(3), Jefferey Kirwin

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This article will explore and explain the two approaches circuit courts use when § 365(d)(3) of the Bankruptcy Code is at issue and will analyze the best approach in the context of COVID-related increase in commercial tenants’ bankruptcy claims. Specifically, this article will analyze how each approach affects the parties by explaining which party is protected at the different stages, and will explain what and when a tenant must pay a landlord. This article will then describe options each party could pursue at different stages in the bankruptcy and outline how each option affects the payment to the landlord. Lastly, …

Fight For Housing, Gema Hernandez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) is a law firm chain that resides in 22 counties here in California. Focusing on the issues of housing, education, transportation, workers’ rights, and benefits. Monterey County is facing a housing crisis resulting in residents being displaced. The project implemented to address this issue is an outreach presentation program. To advise students of fundamental tenancy rights in California. Using this method, the hope is that they can advocate for themselves and avoid exploitation in the future. The students and mentors from CRLA created the outreach program. Some recommendations to aid the housing crisis are to …

Zoning By A Thousand Cuts, Sara C. Bronin

Pepperdine Law Review

Zoning is increasingly viewed as a constraint on the nation’s housing supply, and as zoning enters its second century, there is a strong drumbeat for reform. Across the country, reformers have targeted the elimination of single-family zoning, pointing to research showing that single-family zoning drives up development costs, degrades the environment, and homogenizes communities. While allowing more multi-family options could help address these issues, reformers should not exclusively focus on the elimination of single-family zoning. Process requirements including mandatory public hearings, and substantive requirements involving lot configuration, building size, and occupancy, among other things, play a significant role in determining …

Rescaling City Property, Amnon Lehavi

Arkansas Law Review

This Article seeks to identify the growing tension between the contemporary physical and digital reality of cities across the world and the formal, often archaic, body of norms that governs city powers and duties vis-à-vis different types of persons and corporations: locals, non-local residents of the same nation-state, and foreigners. The nation-state’s continuing dominance, both in the domestic division of power across various legal systems and in the international arena, often results in a systemic mismatch.

Playing Monopoly With The Neighborhood: Impact Of Series Limited Liability Companies On Nuisance Abatement Actions And Housing Code Enforcement, Lauren Williams

Cleveland State Law Review

The City of Cleveland has been one of the most active cities in combating the negative effects of the 2008 financial crisis, utilizing nuisance abatement actions in combination with municipal programs aimed at assisting homeowners and renters. However, the Ohio Revised Limited Liability Company Act ("ORLLCA"), passed in 2021, may reverse the progress made in cities like Cleveland by enabling real estate investors to conceal assets in several series under the same limited liability company, resulting in rising vacancy rates and unstable communities. This will negatively impact the effectiveness of nuisance abatement actions and traditional housing code enforcement in curbing …

The Power Of State Legislatures To Invalidate Private Deed Restrictions: Is It An Unconstitutional Taking?, Ken Stahl

Pepperdine Law Review

Over the past several years, state legislatures confronting a severe housing shortage have increasingly preempted local land use regulations that restrict housing supply in an effort to facilitate more housing production. But even where state legislatures have been successful, they now confront another problem: many of the preempted land use regulations are duplicated at the neighborhood or block level through private “covenants, conditions and restrictions” (CCRs) enforced by homeowners associations (HOAs). In response, California’s legislature has begun aggressively invalidating or “overriding” these CCRs. While many states have barred HOAs from prohibiting pets, clotheslines, signs, and flags, California has moved much …

Growth ≠ Density: Zoning Deregulation And The Enduring Problem Of Sprawl, Christopher Serkin, Kelsea Best

Pepperdine Law Review

According to its many critics, zoning bears significant responsibility for the housing crisis in America and for promoting unsustainable development patterns. Reformers argue that zoning reduces the supply of new housing and therefore drives up prices in thriving communities. Zoning also increases carbon emissions by restricting density in the urban core and promoting carbon-intensive, land-consuming, automobile-dependent sprawl in single-family suburbs. A growing chorus calls for relaxing zoning limits in order to promote growth in the urban core as a response to the twin crises of housing costs and climate change. Relaxing zoning limits will almost certainly promote growth but may …

Measuring Local Policy To Advance Fair Housing And Climate Goals Through A Comprehensive Assessment Of Land Use Entitlements, Moira O'Neill, Eric Biber, Nicholas J. Marantz

Pepperdine Law Review

California’s legislature has passed several laws that intervene in local land-use regulation in order to increase desperately needed housing production—particularly affordable housing production. Some of these new laws expand local reporting requirements concerning zoning and planning laws, and the application of those laws apply to proposed housing development. This emphasis on measurement requires the state to develop a housing data strategy to support both enforcement of existing law and effective policymaking in the future. Our Comprehensive Assessment of Land Use Entitlements Study (CALES) predates, but aligns with and supports, this state-led effort to improve local reporting. For the cities that …

Recessionary Woes: Examining Economic Policies And Their Impact On Student Loan Debt And Housing Stability In The United States, Connor Recck

Senior Theses and Projects

Recessionary periods can seldom be avoided, but our modern public infrastructure has designed mechanisms to respond to these downturns. Economic policy has rapidly changed over the last 50 years, and the types of tools policymakers use have evolved with it. When looking at the Great Recession (2007-2009) and the COVID-19 recession (2020), a federal response structure was vital for the health of the macroeconomy. These recessionary periods serve as case studies for a review of economic policymaking activity in the United States since 2000. To examine the efficacy of the federal government’s fiscal and monetary infrastructure, policies focused on supporting …

Expanding The Right To Counsel In Eviction Cases: Arguments For And Limitations Of "Civil Gideon" Laws In A Post-Covid 19 World, Jennifer S. Prusak

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

With the cost of housing rising nationwide and incomes largely failing to keep pace with this increase, the United States is in the midst of interrelated affordable housing and eviction crises. The housing affordability metric that has long been the bedrock of American housing policy is that households should spend no more than thirty percent of their income on housing. This is no longer an attainable goal for many Americans. By 2017, forty-eight percent of renter households were “rent burdened”—they paid more than thirty percent of their income in rent. Over a quarter of American renters, or 11 million …

Patching The Patchwork: Moving The Civil Right To Counsel Forward With Key Data, Maria Roumiantseva

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

While the pandemic has exposed many long-standing realities about the United States, the destructive everyday crisis of eviction is top of mind as moratoria have now expired and rental assistance funds dissipate with no anticipated replenishment. Therefore, though this piece addresses legal representation in civil legal proceedings more broadly, we will start with an eviction story.

It can be taken as fact that not too far from where you are reading this piece, a tenant is facing an eviction unrepresented. She cannot afford a private attorney. She is income eligible for legal aid, but the office near her home …

Homeless Residency Restrictions, Ben A. Mcjunkin

West Virginia Law Review

Last year, the West Virginia House of Delegates introduced a radical proposal for responding to homelessness within the state: privately enforceable residency restrictions. As introduced, the restrictions prohibited homeless individuals from sheltering themselves, from being sheltered by others, or from receiving food or care within 1,500 feet of a school or childcare center. This prohibition was to operate statewide, transforming an issue that historically has been considered hyper-local into a subject of state concern. Moreover, the proposed bill established a private right of action for enforcement, legislating around the possibility of recalcitrant municipal governments declining to abide by the residency …

Digitizing The Warranty Of Habitability, Edward W. De Barbieri, Jordan Fruchter

UC Irvine Law Review

The warranty of habitability was touted fifty years ago as a gamechanger in rebalancing power between tenants and landlords. Under the warranty, a residential tenant’s duty to pay rent is conditioned on a landlord’s obligation to make repairs. Scholars who have studied the warranty of habitability have focused on its defensive use, primarily when a tenant is already in eviction proceedings. Consensus has emerged that the warranty as a defensive shield has failed to deliver meaningful benefits to tenants living in poor housing conditions.

This Article explores whether an affirmative use of the warranty, coupled with a new technology and …